Projects

Design Inspiration

May 05, 2010

The new Penelope sales booklet front cover. This new collection is due out in about two weeks at Spring Quilt Market in Minneapolis. . .

Hello Ladies,

I have been in a "Paris state of mind" lately...Missing the flea markets, the patisserie, the confisserie...I could go on, but to those of you who know me, I'm a bit of a broke record when it comes to Paris.

I've named my new "Penelope en Paris" It's the fourth intro we've done of the Teatime Floral series...The color palette is slightly muted. It looks great in with "tea stained" fabrics.

It all started with the piece of a slipcover that I found at a little stall at the now famous Cligancourt flea market just outside of Paris. I'll never forget the experience I had buying that scrap of fabric...

So there I am in this little lean-to fabric shop in one of the alleys in Cligancourt. It's one of the little shanties that seem like they have been there forever. There are all sorts of tassels, shawls & embroideries hanging in fragments from the ceiling, with piles of large fabric scraps of every description: huge drapery panels, parts of old quilts, you name it..all over the floor. The aisles are tight and the people, and as you might expect, are as eccentric as the day is long.

I spotted a lovely 19th century floral scrap of cotton out of the corner of my eye. I moved over to it and began examining it for the quality of the printing, the repeat sizes, the motifs. I loved it, but I stood around with it in my hand, thinking about what to do with it...it seemed a little sophisticated back then. I closed my eyes and the next thing I know I feel a tug on the fabric that I was holding. Opening my eyes a woman in a "get up" that was a cross between Vampira & a Nicholas Nickleby character, had her paws on the fabric I had not yet relinquished.

She clearly wanted the fabric that I had in my hand, and she wasn't giving up until she had it...

I'll finish this little tome in my next blog, when I tell you the rest of the story and show you the other cover from our new sales presentation booklet....it has some unexpected twists & turns and a trip in the Chunnel...so stay tuned.

January 25, 2010

For what seems like years now, people have been asking for "more brights", when are you going to do brights again?...By now, most of you have figured out that I LOVE COLOR...and that I refuse to be pigeon holed with one look or one color palette...The brights in this new collection remind me of my favorite 12 piece marker set (complete a carrying case and vinyl handle) from the Lillian Vernon catalog that my mom bought me back in 4th or 5th grade.

That color palette is still with me...

Here's the covers to the new Fun Flowers collection that will be going our to our distributors this week (to be shown to your local quilt shop owner shortly after that)...so make sure to ask your LQSO if she's seen the new Fun Flowers collection, OK? You can tell her you saw a sneak peek of it on my blog.

Fun Flowers I (with White Backgrounds) & Fun Flowers II (with the Cocoa Backgrounds) along with our colorful Fun Flower Library of coordinates are slated to be in the stores this August.

Fun Flowers I (with White Backgrounds) & Fun Flowers III (with the Black Backgrounds) along with the same colorful Fun Flower Library of
coordinates are slated to be in the stores this September.

Hope you all are as excited about this new collection as we are here...I LOVE to change things up a bit...and this new collection is just what I needed to lift my spirits, this stormy, snow covered winter.

I'll have lots more sneak peeks on Fun Flowers in the days & weeks ahead...magazine quilts, new (and not so new) quilting buddy's projects with the FFF (Fun Flowers Fabrics), so come back soon...

December 19, 2009

The ric rac & ribbon is from my buddy Adam...(quilt shop owners take note!) The Forget-Me-Not millinery flowers are from my personal stash...but I have seen something very similar recently at Michaels.

Well Ladies, it's my day today, and a bit of a coincidence, actually...It's my 200th blog post. I have to laugh, when I think of what my webmaster said about blogging a couple of years ago, when I wanted to add a blog onto my website. Something to the effect of "be careful with that and make sure you really want to do it and that you won't run out of things to say". LOL...

Actually, I only run out of time, not things to show & tell. I have pictures from trips and projects and things that inspire me waiting in files to show you...

Anyhoo, I designed the panel to expand the "circle of friends"...that is, people who liked the Dolly Dresses quilt from last fall & who would like to work with the Dolly Dresses fabrics, but like me, don't have the time to do all of the applique'. Tick-tock, I say.

So before I even was finished with the dolly dresses panel fabric, I called the Beth "the Beauty Queen" Hayes (it's the cheekbones) at McCall's Quilting. What I love about working with Beth is that she has even less time to waste than I do. I send her a picture, she loves it, she hates it...I get instant feed back...Tick Tock.

So the embellished Dolly Dress Up panel quilt that was shown in the LakeHouse booth at Fall Quilt market, (which I showed in a previous blog back in October)...Is going to be in the McCall's Quilting April 2010 issue that hits the newsstands in February. The timing is perfect, because the Dolly Dresses 2 fabrics will be getting to the stores in early April...For those of you with scraps left over from Doll Dresses 1, I used a lot of scraps from that collection in my quilt...Not to worry though, DD 1, 2 & 3...they all go together, it's a mix & match thing...like Garanimals...LOL

Meantime, it's time for you to give it your best shot...Remember the scene in the movie "Notting Hill"...Hugh Grant's character is sitting around the dinner table with friends? Each of them had to tell a story about why they deserved the last brownie...Well now's the time...Give it your best shot & tell me why you deserve to win the Dolly Dress Up panels (months earlier than anyone else) from our secret stash here at the studio.

Leave your story below and I'll announce the winners of the Dolly Dress Up panels tomorrow.

December 12, 2009

I met our next guest Miss Tula Pink at Spring Quilt Market in Pittsburgh. It was a mutual admiration society...Tula was with her mom Kathy Runyan. Kathy owns Country Expressions Quilt Shoppe in Stewartsville Missouri. It didn't hurt that our conversation started with Kathy telling me how they "sell a ton of LakeHouse fabric" in her shop. As you can imagine, nothing makes me happier! In turn, I waas absolutely smitten with the tote bag that Tula was carrying made of the fabric that she designs for Moda.

November 06, 2009

With references like this so easy to download off the internet, it wasn't difficult to be inspired...

We started with Ric's version of Le Roi de Soleil (the Sun King). He came up with this fabulous wig based on pictures of hairstyles from that era. There are over sized disposable plastic beer cups taped to the skull cap part of his wig under all of the paper curls...

Ric's daughter Erica is responsible for all of the make up. The "neck injury" is a reference to the guillotine's effect during the French Revolution...Ric's cape is a combination of a scalloped collar cut with piking shears, and dozens of ruched paper strips on the front of the cape. The little epaulets on the shoulder area of the cape were placed there to make his movement easier.

Next is Patrick, vogueing for the camera just after his make up was applied.

We made his breasts the same way as the skull cap for the wigs..."a la Martha". Then we taped them to his Haz Mat suit. You can see that his cumberbund is missing, but this gives you a good idea of how his garment was draped. Believe it or not, this would have been much more difficult to pull off in fabric. Newsprint has so much more body than most fabrics...we "pre-scrunched" the paper so that it was more pliable to work with as we did the draping.

Here's me just before the party, getting cinched into my party dress, by now you all know how much I love scalloped edges...

There are only a few pieces to my dress--the skirt with left & right over drapes in the front, the waistband that hid most of the unsightly details, the shawl collar & two paper rosettes to adorn the bottom of the shawl where it is taped together. We scalloped the edges of my Haz Mat sleeves and created a cute little fold back cuff with rubber bands.

I'm so glad that Ric insisted that we all get into the spirit of Halloween this year and go "all out" with our costumes. While I love Halloween, I have never been really big on actually participating in the spectacle of it all...It was a laugh riot from beginning to end.

October 14, 2009

Without further ado, here are some close up shots of "me little birdies"...

Here's a shot of the tree, and the little goody basket we had the little bird-stickered-favors in...

I got all of the little German gold foil die cuts (even the crown on the back shelf) at a wonderful place in Berkeley, during my last trip to CA...More on this shop soon, when I get back over there.

Here's a little close up of the marvelous garlands that I bought in the flower district (28th & 7th Ave) in Manhattan...I also got the little eggs and many of the birds that I used in our booth at Bill's Flower Market which has been there as long as I have lived in New York.

I have had so many things to show & tell between my trip to California in early September and now. But I have had to keep my nose to the grindstone in preparation for Fall Quilt Market. We ran into a lot of snags along the way. It was like a comedy of errors a lot of the time...(things just kept running amok!) Big thanks to Martha Hall for making the 3 new quilts shown below.

We featured our new Teatime Floral III grouping "front & center" in our booth at market. A new panel fabric that I designed featuring North American Song Birds prompted our decorations...We had great fun with all of the little "do dahs" -- eggs, nests, lots of little birdies, some old fashioned feather trees...

The urns in the center are from the Clignancourt flea market in Paris. I bought them almost twenty years ago for my own studio (w-ayyy before French General), when I was there working on an interior design project. (So I really have to laugh when I hear back from sales reps that "this collection doesn't look like something Holly would do"--when in reality what I have done in the last year is actually inspired by some of my most treasured things).

Believe it or not, the peeling paint and rust on these antique urns is practically the same color palette as the blues and browns in TTF 3...click here for a closer comparison! The LOVE pillow is by pal Penny Sturges of Quilts Illustrated. My new Whirlwind quilt in the background features the "Song Bird I"panel fabric LH 09024. I'll be making inspiration sheets for this quilt available on line very soon.

Here's a close up of my peeling, rusty, iron garden urns...I know, I know, one person's trash is another's treasure!

September 01, 2009

Decided to take a little business trip to California, before the onslaught of market preparations. Much to my delight, I was able to have a delicious lunch with two of the funniest blogging quilters I know...

I call them "Elizapam". We met in Mill Valley, which IMHO is pretty much the cutest town in Marin. With it's little parks, turn-of-the-century shingle style cottages, and a storybook downtown, a girl could fall for the place...

It's too bad we had to "pinkie swear" about some of our next up-and-coming projects (lots more soon). We gabbed for several hours, only to call it short when East Bay traffic patterns caused them concern. (They graciously offered to come to my side of the bay, as I am again staying in Marin county with my old buddy Ric, who I have mentioned before). It was great seeing you girls!

Over this past weekend, I saw a really fun arts & crafts exhibit called "The Box Show" in Point Reyes Station. The show has become so popular, that they have to hold a lottery for open spots. It was so much fun. Each artist got a box to do anything they want with. Here's a few examples of some of the projects they showed...

This soft sculpture was made by Mollie Lounibos. I just loved her birds, and wherever did she get that wood textured fabric?

Don't you all want a box made of Blue Willow china? It's by Pattie Grey.

Simon Jeremiah did this homage to Joseph Cornell, one of my favorite 3 dimensional collage artists.

It's magazine quilt season right now, so I'll have lots more to show and tell when I get back to the studio.

December 23, 2008

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I will be brief...Last night Paton, the girls & I walked to see the holiday shop windows...My favorite windows BY FAR, were at Bergdorf Goodman...

The entire moon was decoupaged with small bits of newspaper. The craftsmanship of this series of vignettes was spectacular. Each window looked like it took hundreds of hours of work to make all of the intricate "3-d collage" pieces, and seemingly days to actually install each piece into place. I had to remember to not drool on the glass as I got close enough for some of these shots!

No details were spared...

This is just one of almost a dozen fabulous large and small windows at BG. I took almost 200 pictures last night, and I hope to be back with more holiday magic as soon as time permits.

IMHO, Christmas is the most inspirational time to be in New York. I highly recommend it.